SUPPORTING COMMUNITY COLLEGES
The New Jersey Council for the Humanities has implemented a strategic focus on supporting community colleges as partners in our mission to explore, cultivate, and champion the public humanities in order to strengthen New Jersey’s diverse community.
Community colleges hold a distinctive place in our society at the nexus of academic expertise and community-focused accessibility. They are ideally positioned to help advocate for the humanities in everyday life and to use the humanities to help strengthen our democracy.
Our partnerships include efforts to both leverage the position of community colleges to advance the humanities and to support humanities faculty and staff at New Jersey community colleges. Among these efforts are an ongoing series of convenings for faculty and staff, a new non-credit certificate program in community journalism offered in conjunction with community colleges, and public humanities exhibitions.
Events in this program will include professional development and skill-building for individuals working on humanities programs, capacity building for organizations, and opportunities for all of us to come together for learning and networking. Efforts include virtual and in-person gatherings, as well as Communities of Practice for community college humanists and storytelling and oral history practitioners.
NJCH and Journalism + Design at the New School are partnering with a set of community colleges around the state in 2023-24 to create and deliver free noncredit community journalism certificate offerings, to equip people with tools to better understand and articulate what's happening in their communities.
As the official state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, NJCH has supported hundreds of organizations with millions of dollars in grant funding. NJCH regularly offers grant funding in two separate streams: Incubation Grants and Action Grants. Both offer awards between $3,000-$15,000. Incubation Grants support the planning and development of public humanities projects, while Action Grants support the implementation or continuation of public humanities projects.
In March 2023, NJCH hosted a free daylong program to foster intellectual exchange and debate about the most pressing topics for humanities faculty on community college campuses and provide needed spaces for these faculty to connect and collaborate as peers.
Funding, creating, and amplifying humanities-grounded programming that raises media literacy and expands support for local journalism—particularly in communities and places that are seldom covered by traditional media outlets.
In collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum on Main Street program, NJCH brought the exhibit "Voices and Votes: Democracy in America" to six community colleges around New Jersey and supported a host of democracy-related public humanities programs at nonprofit organizations.
